The study – fielded twice a year – asks senior marketers at for-profit companies to describe how they show the short- and long-term impact of marketing spend on their business.

For several years, only 40% or fewer of respondents have reported being able to demonstrate the short-term impact of their spending in a quantitative manner. But in this latest edition fully half of CMOs said they can prove their short-term impact quantitatively.

The ability to quantitatively prove the long-term impact of marketing spend seems to also be improving. In this most recent edition of the survey, more than 4 in 10 CMOs said they could do so. That marks the 5th consecutive edition in which a greater share have done so, all the way up from 29.4% in August 2015.

CMOs’ Ability to Prove Social Media’s Impact Also Rising

Almost one-quarter (23.3%) of CMOs now say they can prove the impact of social media on their business quantitatively. While that remains a relatively low proportion, it’s about twice the share from just 2 years earlier, and marks a new high point in the survey’s history.

Overall, close to two-thirds feel that they can prove the impact of social media either quantitatively (23.3%) or have a good qualitative sense of that impact (42.3%). The resulting third (34.4%) who are unable to show the impact yet is down from roughly 45% in prior editions of the report.

Respondents to this latest survey reported 42.1% of projects using marketing analytics before a decision was made. That’s up from 37.5% six months ago and 31.6% a year ago, after hovering between 29% and 35% in recent years.

B2C companies appear to be far ahead in the use of analytics: a majority of both B2C services (55.7%) and B2C product (53.8%) companies are using analytics before a decision is made. That compares with fewer than 40% B2B product (37.5%) and service (35.2%) companies.

As a result, analytics is having a greater impact on B2C than B2B companies. On a 7-point scale, B2C services companies rated analytics’ contribution to company performance as a 4.7, and B2B product companies rated it at 4.6. By comparison, B2B companies are deriving less value, with B2B services companies rating analytics’ contribution a 3.9 and B2B product companies rating it a 3.7.

Perhaps it’s no wonder then that B2C companies generally are more confident in their ability to prove ROI than their B2B counterparts…

About the Data: The CMO Survey is fielded biennially and is sponsored by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the American Marketing Association, and Deloitte. This latest edition – the 20th – is based on 362 top US marketers at for-profit companies, 98% of whom are VP-level and above. The survey was fielded from January 9-30, 2018.